JDINCINERATOR

The only issue with Split-Fiction is its writing, otherwise it's splendid. Lumines Arise is sensational, though personally I don't think the playlist is as scintillating as Electronic Symphony's soundtrack on the Vita.

Skate Story is a bit overrated tbh. Yeah it's cool and has some imagination, but the overly descriptive dialogue tries to mask a lack of substance, and the controls are iffy.

Push Square do come up with some terrible puns.

How many times has Snake Eater come out since 2005? We've had the PS3 HD remaster, the 3DS version, the Vita version and now Delta Snake Eater. We get it's a classic, but the industry seems to love beating us over the head with them sometimes.

CrossWorlds beats the breaks off Mario Kart World, even if it's not quite as good as All-Stars Racing: Transformed.

It's a case of style over substance really. The flowery dialogue hides the lack of substance, and there's no moves list.

Characters are usually quite shallow in Octopath Traveller games despite all the characters you can play as.

Rennsport is just too tame to enjoy when there are so many superior alternatives.

I didn't like the camera in this game. Might've been a personal problem, but it seemed erratic. Also, I don't feel as though Titans of the Tide takes risks and plays things way too safely. I want to see SpongeBob evolve meaningfully instead of merely expanding on what Battle For Bikini Bottom-Rehydrated did in 2020.

Cosmic Invasion plays well, but it's lacking something extra. It's basically Marvel's take on Street of Rage as far as I can tell.

Nice to know that Lara has finally cleaned herself up and has returned to her old better self. Didn't think the Jill Valentine in Resident Evil 3 Remake look ever suited her.

I would vote for Skate Story and Old School Rally but they're not in the list.

If you guys love Terminator 2D: No Fate, go and play Huntdown from 2020. Huntdown didn't receive much critical attention, but is a brilliant cyberpunk retro blaster that'll certainly satiate and give you more of what 2D No Fate gives you, but with some added Duke Nukem-like flare.

The new adventures of Adam Jensen have been put on hold.

It's a bit artsy fartsy with its detailed descriptions, but it is certainly a pleasant and worthwhile skateboarding experience.

@Balaam_ It is fantastic and it's really lovely to see a proper PS1-inspired rally game.

Reviewed this for PSU and I really enjoyed it. I didn't think the default handling was that bad because with some cars I could glide through corners with grace. I did run into some freezes that were troublesome, particularly when trying to start a Head-To-Head, but really Old School Rally is an exemplary example of a proper PS1 style rally game on PS5.

A fair list, though to be honest Ragnarok is quite over-inflated with acclaim. Ragnarok becomes relentless with combat encounters so gratuitously the pacing takes a hit, and also Atreus expresses his boredom and fighting draugr over and over and over again. Yes it's an epic adventure in SONY's ostentatious fashion, but its shine is too excessive. Same with Alan Wake 2 because Saga Anderson is bleh personality wise-she aint no viking lol. If Saga's a viking then Alan Wake is a space cadet.

Dispatch is a cool and slick superhero adventure and the banter between the superheroes is entertaining, but I don't find the dispatch gameplay to be very enjoyable at all. It's too statistic heavy and can be quite messy if you just send any superhero out to respond to any call.

I'd give it a 7.5/10 as I did for my review on PSU.

I can tell that Ubisoft have made Beyond Good And Evil much more ostentatious than the 2003 original, and Ubi loves making things much bigger whilst forgetting to put substance into their games these days.

Unbound is way too high. The artstyle in Unbound looks like a teenager vomited their art project all over the screen.

@nomither6 Yeah it was, however SONY has moved away from the seventh gen franchises now. I wonder if some of them were planned for the PS3 initially but became PS4 exclusives.

PS5 has been good and it's an impressive technical achievement, but really it's continuing the trends the PS5 laid down, and is generally more of a follower than a new console. PS5 games are still carrying the emotional storytelling throne The Last of Us jubilantly sits on, and I think the big hitters are pretentious despite having some deep moments. Astro Bot is the best game on PS5 in my mind because it actually dares to be fun and colourful. Yeah gamers might scoff at it and say it's too much like a Super Mario game, but considering that it's more joyful than the other big SIE games in the past two-decades, it certainly stands out. It doesn't get a 94 on Metacritic for no reason.

Definitely, they've been following the emotional template of The Last of Us far too much. I also think many of them are pretentious when it comes to getting us to care about them. It's not that these games don't have their moments or brilliance, it's just they feel like they're following an overarching theme that's defining this generation in a po-faced like manner. This is why I think Astro Bot is the best PS game of this generation because it's actually a fun videogame with colour and character-the stuff that's been sorely lacking since the seventh gen.

@Smackosynthesis Can't you at least try any of them out?

You guys gotta give Neon White a go. One of the most underrated games on PS5 I think.

I think PS5 has been nice, and Astro Bot is probably my favourite game in a long time-but the sappy narratives are getting too pretentious and indicative of The Last of Us. I know our culture influences how games are now, but SONY ought to take some creative risks-though I don't mean like Concord.

My review is on the PSU website and on Metacritic. I thought it was an enjoyable super/antihero adventure game, but the dispatch gameplay was underwhelming and included too many stats. The data puzzles were cool if reminiscent of Deus Ex.

Lacks tension? There are missions where you have to dodge bolders and keep your deliveries from being destroyed or pooped on by birds.

@get2sammyb Yeah I agree it is an easy reference point, especially considering Push Square is a Playstation website, so good point.

I think it downplays The Old Country when you mention Uncharted next to it. Sure, if it's like Uncharted that'd be exciting, but give Mafia its own shine.

Gears of War was celebrated with a remaster 10 years ago, and now it's being revised and again and now is becoming playable on PS5. We don't need to keep being reminded about the original Gears of War. It was great when it came out in 2006, but it's not on the level of Gears of War 2, and I think we all agree with this.

As for Aaron positing how it came to this? It's quite clear, there's huge hype surrounding a big modern ambitious game, and the publishers leverage that hype to get us pre-ordering and buying the game-and then while they make all the money, we receive a shoddy product.

This goes to show that we videogamers are cattle because we pre-order and buy without questioning anything. We lead ourselves to disappointment by refusing to refrain. If we don't open our wallets we're saying to these publishers that we're not going to put up with unfinished tosh. But we never learn our lessons and we'll just keep buying and buying and opening ourselves up to disappointment.

It's quite clear that MindsEye is one of those bullshot games that's made to look great in promotional images and footage, but is a pile of ass when it's released to the videogame public.

From what I've played, MindsEye is what I'd call a functional mess. The game works and can be enjoyable a little bit, but it's so disjointed and feel empty more often than not.

@themightyant I agree sort of. With new teams coming next season, we should have a bigger F1 grid, maybe back to 24 cars as it should be with that top 10 points structure they have. 20 cars just isn't quite enough when you're giving half the field points.

I reckon this is a 6/10 because there's no real innovation here, just a lot of emphasis on content that engages rather than entertains. We're going to keep getting F1 games like this from EA because we keep buying them. We say we want classic cars and tracks, but we won't get those because EA are thinking about improving trends. The reversed tracks idea I've seen in GRID, and there are only a few of them in the game-and they're not interesting at all.

Push Square feel the same way about Deliver At All Costs as I do about The Precinct, it's a mixed bag.

@ShogunRok Do you think an 8/10 is too high for a game that has the array of technical issues, flat characters and banal activities that The Precinct often mires players in? Though it's sort-of unique, placing parking fines on car windscreens isn't a fun activity.

I don't think games have to be about playing because if they can make an impression on you that's what matters. Some of the best games can have minimal gameplay.

Days Gone isn't a "great" game, it's highly generic and contains a protagonist who doesn't have the agency or sense of empowerment and presence of other Playstation icons. Deacon behaves like a teenager who grumbles about getting out of bed in the morning to go to school, and his dialogue is so bleh you can barely hear what he says unless you have the TV volume up.

Poor Days Gone, it was probably too generic to make the list.

The vibes are really nice and I appreciate the positivity and youthful exuberance, but the dialogue is awful. Listening to these girls yammer on and spewing pin-headed swearwords and trying to act hip all the time is grating. The voice acting too is very overemphasized, like every word spoken is an exaggeration and it comes across like a bad stage play.

I disagree, All-Stars Racing: Transformed is BETTER than Mario Kart 8: Deluxe and Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled. The former is an enhanced edition of the Wii-U original, and Nitro Fueled doesn't have the spark of innovation that All-Stars Racing: Transformed has.

Would've been better if it shadow dropped at The Game Awards.

@Dan12836666 They can't be good every month.

The Life is Strange games have always had terrible dialogue and Double Exposure doubles down on that.

At least Astro Bot is in there and it's great Stellar Blade connects with gamers like it does. Just wish the industry would stop chasing trends and keep chasing fun, but publishers need to exploit our playing habbits, so fun is of a secondary concern. I'm not sure about this Infinitely Sticky, but sounds like a chill kinda game.

I think if the CEO of Game Science thinks its game deserves the GOTY honour over Astro Bot, then that's precisely the kind of attitude that'll entice the crybaby antics of the Wukong fanbase. Believe if the game you make yes, but being smug and disrespectful will only make you come across like a sore loser.

The kind of disgusting behaviour you can expect from the Wukong fanboys. Ahh well let them get all angry and upset, they'll get over it.

The Plucky Squire is one of those I'm sure some of the casual Playstation audience would write off straight away, but playing it shows that a light-hearted and modest Zelda-like puzzle adventure game will be engrossing in the right hands. I think I prefer this over Tunic, especially when it comes to the ingenuity of how the storybook is used as a map you can pop into and out of to solve headscratchers.